i have a Intel C2D T9300, 4GB RAM Laptop recently, so which OS will work best?

any incompatibilities?
any noticable performance difference?
which is more worth?

i dont really like vista because of UAC and stuff, very irritating, but XP is going to be out of support soon? but i still like XP... and between XP 32 and 64 which is better? and Vista 32 and 64?

If you vLite then I would say the choice is between Vista x64 and XP 64. My vote would still go for XP 64. You will just notice a lot more speed than Vista. That is for sure. However since you are on a laptop, I would make sure about all the drivers being all in order before I go for 64 bit flavor in any OS.

I have a an AMD Turion 64 laptop with 4GB memory. I have flopped back and forth with Vista 64 and 32 and have now decided on staying with 32. Personally I think Vista looks too nice to go back to XP. The UAC can be turned off with a click so that's not an issue and I don't know why people keeping harping on it. In all honesty I don't see any performance difference between the 64 and 32 bit versions although this laptop is for school and work so games are not played on it. Now after having Vista 64 on for about 5 months I just went back to the 32 bit. Two main reasons. 1. My laptop has a built in mini SD memory card reader, Vista64 doesn't even see it and even if it did there aren't any drivers for it. The whole driver issue with Vista 64 is pretty much gone by the wayside too unless your using some old hardware. Most of the drivers are out there. The second reason I switched is because I just picked up Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5. It says it works with Vista however when you put the disk in a window pops up and says it won't work with 64 bit.

There are a few other programs that I needed for school that will work fine on Vista 32 but not on Vista 64. So since I don't see any performance hits and I'm tired of working from two different PCs to get work done I switched to Vista 32 until 64 bit programming becomes mainstream.

My laptop has a 5400RPM hard drive on it so even if there was any performance increase by any of the OS's your looking at I think that's pretty much my bottleneck for now. I'm sure some geek can tell me that Xp is so and so faster than Vista and that 64 bit on certain applications is faster than 32 bit. I don't see any noticiable difference and I'd rather take my dog out for a walk then spend time figuring out how I can get some application to start up 1 second faster or get 3 more FPS from a game.

Peace!

UAC is a good thing. However, it can be disabled. It's always been able to be disabled. "and stuff" can probably be disabled too.



First off, XP64 will be supported for some time, as it's based on Server 2003, which will be around for a while yet. NOBODY at Microsoft is too eager to stop updating Server 2003.

Secondly, if MS stops supporting it.. who cares? When's the last time you called Microsoft with an OS problem?

i would love to use Vista X64 on a day to day basis but i cannot run peer guardian due to the whole WHQL Drivers thing. So for the time being i use XP X64 although honestly i cannot wait until the day i switch to Vista X64 permanently

Windows Vista x64 edition

PR department?


For a laptop, if its a tablet PC then get Vista. Its slower, and uses more battery but it has better support for tablets.

Otherwise use XP Pro. Support wont stop coming for awhile, 2013 I think.

I've used them all and in my personal opinion I find XP to be better. I cannot stand Vista. My hardware can more than run it at fast speeds, but it just feel too sluggish to me. It's lacking in some areas. A few (IMO) nice things. But overall it's not something I would choose to run.

That being said...

If you like Vista, make sure your hardware has drivers. Most all current hardware has drivers for at least the 32bit version of Vista, 64bit is sorely lacking for some things. Program compatability with 64bit is also a factor. The vast majority of programs runs just fine in 64bit, but some either don't work at all or work poorly.

With 4 gigs or RAM or more you will definitely have to have a 64bit OS whether it's XP or Vista to be able to use the full amount of RAM.

If your concerned about XP going out of support then install XP64 as it IS Server 2003. S2K3 will be supported for a lot longer than the consumer OS ever will be.

I'd definitely go with 64bit considering the amount of RAM you have. Whether it's XP or Vista that you choose, is ultimately up to you.

XP 64, by a long margin!
I tried out Vista after it came out and was very disappointed. It has severely lacking application compatibility and driver support, a lot of things were arbitrarily changed around for no reason at all, it's quite a bit slower than XP (especially with games) and still has lots of flaws: file copying bug, network bugs etc. I would list Uac there as well, but "It's a feature, not a bug" ™

With XP64, all of my apps work, driver support is fine, and it even feels somewhat snappier than XP 32bit
XP64 will still be supported quite a bit longer than XP, since it's based on Windows 2003.


Whoa, "smart" choice
Someone should tell you that you can't use 4GB on a 32bit OS.


rofl
One of the worst pro-Vista arguments I've heard yet. You can easily outfit XP with themes to look as good or even better than Vista. There are even several Vista transformation packs, should you wish XP to look the same as Vista.

I do like the way the Vista looks but I have to agree XP 64 by a long margin!

mmm... then just talking about performance alone, XP wins Vista right? and 32bit and 64bits are abt the same? i read 32 or 64 bits don't provide much difference but maybe thats a year or 2 ago, what abt now?

for me, i tested Vista x86 and Vista x64 with PCMark05 and 3DMark06 didnt seem to give much difference...

Vista 64bits
- Processor 5.4
- Memory(RAM) 5.1
+ Graphics 4.8
- Gaming Graphics 5.3
- Primary Hard Disk 5.3

- PCMark Vantage x64 3807 PCMarks
- 3DMark06 3943 3DMarks
- Performance Test 6.1 539.3

Vista 32bits
- Processor 5.4
- Memory(RAM) 5.1
+ Graphics 4.8
- Gaming Graphics 5.3
- Primary Hard Disk 5.3

- PCMark Vantage x86 3895
- PCMark05 6077 PCMarks
- 3DMark06 3940 3DMarks

XP 32bits
- PCMark05 5476 PCMarks
- 3DMark06 4130 3DMarks

as for compatibilities, i guess XP64 will be fine?

Synthetic benchmarks really dont mean much.

32bit and 64bit are about the same, but the improvements you will see most comes from 64bit programs and the larger memory space available to the programs that can make use of it. If you have 4GB+ of RAM and you use a 32bit OS, you just wasted money on that extra RAM because you cannot use it. To get full RAM capacity you HAVE to use a 64bit OS.

I've been using XP x64 on my newest PC for about 4 months now, and I don't see myself going back to any 32bit OS anytime soon.

I regulary set up a Vmware install inside memory, that is on a ramdisk at 4GB. Xp 32bit ram limit is at 3.2GB ram max.
Cant do that on 32bit =( Ramdisk and ability to use much ram is so many things so superior cool about it that its futile to try and list them all, but anyone known with the concept and knowing how much faster ram is then any harddrive/ssd. Having said that, Using vista and ramdisk dont mix, i dont care what people say that vista will release memory for other programs, it doesnt work as they say, as in i need the memory i have and need right this *instant*. Measuring with DPC you will see some serious latency problems with vista and its memory caching. Couldnt resist, sorry.

Well, it all depends on the hardware really. There isn't too much support for XP64 as far as drivers are concerned. But their might be drivers for your laptop for it, so definitely check before deciding.

I used to run XP32 and denounce Vista. But really, Vista isn't so bad if you have the hardware to support it. All of Vista's annoyances can be turned off. Between 32 and 64-bit Vista, I would say go 64-bit. I've not run into any problems with application compatibility and the driver support for Vista64 is pretty decent.

Also, as mentioned above, since you have 4 GB of RAM, you should think about going 64-bit. That way you can use all 4 GBs of it. I personally think Vista64 is better performance-wise than Vista32. YMMV of course.

I am usually a great supporter of new software versions.

When I bought my notebook last year, I made sure the Dell XPS M1210 I had was Vista capable and Dell offered Vista upgrade when it was released. However, when Vista was released, I found that I cannot upgrade to Vista Premium, only Vista Basic because my notebook runs XP Home Edition. Then I found what "Vista Capable" actually meant, i.e., pure bulls*** since pretty much any post-2000 machine is "Vista Capable" . You cannot run Aero interface if your machine does not have a decent graphic card, and your PC may run at glacial speed.

It really p***es me off, but Microsoft being Microsoft, I end up with with Vista when my offices bought new machines with Vista installed. UAC is outright unusable. I cannot imagine that a software company have the hubris to think they can engineer human behavior. In any case, human behavior is to seek the path of least resistance and humans outright disable UAC.

At this point, I will still use Vista because I am a masochist and have an extremely high bulls*** threshold.

The deal breakers is just 2 points.

1. Vista is slower.
I just assemble 2 new PCs for myself, with almost identical specs. Both Quad Core Q9450, with 8GB Ram and 9800GTX graphics, all running on RAID 0. The machine literally flys running XP x64 but is OK when running Vista.

2. Try copying MBs or GBs over the network and you literally cry over the speed and reliability. I have to leave copying as an overnight task, and even then, it hits or misses when some files are not copied due to "network errors". Road rage is a documented condition, but I seriously think Vista Rage is a perfectly legitimate excuse to go out and kill anyone working at M$.

It begs the question why there is a need to run Vista? The only difference advantage Vista has over XP is that it look better, but there is just too many disadvantages for me to consider using Vista, of any flavours.

So what myself and my business partners decided was to buy machines with Vista Business editions and utilize the downgrade rights to run XP x64 for all our new machines. In the last month, we did this for 5 new machines. I am sure M$ will logged that as Vista's sales though

As for the debate whether to use XP x86 or x64, for a new machine where you have all the drivers, and all the applications you need to run can run on XP x64, then x64 is the way to go. If not, then it is really not a choice, is it?

x64 supports more RAM, and with the price of DDR2 RAM being what it is, one can go silly plugging RAM inside the machine, which is how I end up with 8GB RAM. It would be just plain silly of me to plug in this much RAM into a x86 machine.

I'm currently using Windows XP x64 and it works great, last time I used it I had to many issues, at least its now running stable and everything works fine.

As for Vista... forget it. Too slow, bloated and all that bulls*** you don't want to deal with.

Windows Xp 32
Vista 32

What conclusive benchmarks have you run to show this "slow" behavior?

Every benchmark i've runned gives xp pro x64 2-3% to as much as 50% faster then vista x64.
Ran every thing from 3dmark to performance test. Ran Crysis tests, Mass Effect, Quake games and so forth.
Especially 2d Performance, as well as memory latency test is faster for me in x64 xp.

However, FORGET benchmarks, they will tell you absolutely nada about how in-game responsiveness, movement, the feeling over all. Just simple desktop tasks feels slower.
Vista not only feels sluggish to me, it also performs that few milliseconds slower, enough to make me go crazy.
Some people can tell if there is things as input lag, others couldn't even if their lives depended on it.
Goto humanbenchmark.com, i constantly press below 100ms, which doesnt count, as that's humanily so-called impossible so it gets counted as cheating.

I didnt stand a chance at doing that on vista. There was just no way in hell.

Vista is good for lazy days, where needs are tv-media centers, and office programs. In my book, not even that.

That's interesting, since 3DMark06 gave me virtually identical numbers on my XP64 SP2 and Vista x64 SP1 benchmarks, as well as everything I've tried. I do not own Crysis. How do XP64's DX10 benchmarks rank against Vista x64's? As far as 2D, My Aero desktop feels smooth and moves fluidly. Everything I do runs very fast.


I played a few rounds in Vista x64, then I fired up a virtual machine in Virtualbox.. I fired up Ubuntu, which is running a flat, plain ol' VESA driver with no acceleration. My time went up slightly, about 10%. From reading the FAQ comments it's no surprise that the type of mouse can play a big role in the score. Mine's a cheap Logitech optical which isn't made for this sort of exercise, the throw of the buttons is long and it's not made for twitch reactions. There's also at least one comment that PS/2 mice may do better, which can be true. My VM gets the worst of both worlds, as it's taking incoming USB mouse input and translating it into PS/2 mouse commands (my VM does not have USB activated). I blame the time increase more on this than anything else.

I love XP64, I use it on my gaming rig. I tried it on my laptop, but there are simply no XP64 drivers for the webcam nor the infrared. My laptop also has a very capable DX10 video card (GeForce 8800M GTX) and I wanted to take advantage of that. I've got new parts for my gaming rig on order, including an 8800GT. When it all gets here it's being re-built with Vista x64. XP64 had a place, but I think I can safely say I've outgrown it.

Most people who quote benchmarks to support their "evidence" Vista is slow, resort to gaming benchmarks. But that hardly means anything. Vista has a new driver architecture (brand new, non-mature drivers which weren't exactly the most optimized nor the best, period), on top of a new architecture with things like aero glass and desktop composition (which by itself changes how stuff is drawn in the first place i.e. memory buffer), with a new version of DirectX that's brand new and all. WAY too many factors changed, it's an apples to oranges comparison here, if you want real-life speed comparisons. And most such benchmarks were pre-SP1 too.

I'd say overall performance is within 5% or so of XP's on 99% of everyday tasks. Actually, check some non-graphics related benchmarks (sisoft sandras's , everest's, etc) and you'll see most are pretty much within 1%. Plenty of other benchmarks show that even the RTM as about as fast as XP. And if you look around, you'll even find benchmarks that puts Vista as faster than XP on some things, like file copy operations. I for one noticed deleting thousands of small files with Vista is several times faster than XP. With XP, you select the files, hit delete, then you wait.... wait... keep waiting... wait some more, and when you wake up, it asks to delete them, and does it. With vista, it done deleting files WAY before XP even gets around to ask. Granted, you might not delete tons of tiny files everyday, but it goes to show how the performance isn't exactly as bad as most people put it.

And like some articles quoting actual experts on the subject (Mark Russinovich in this case) say "Vista's file copy dialog box goes away when the cache is committed, while under XP the copy dialog goes away while the committal is still pending. In other words XP is coded to appear fast." For full facts and explanations, visit his most excellent blog -- article here.


I can only disagree here. I wouldn't know the first thing about in-game responsiveness, but when it comes to general system responsiveness/speed, Vista performs no worse than XP does on this box. Definitely not sluggish at all.

I do a LOT of very intensive task everyday (lots of encoding, heavy usage of vmware server and workstation, playing high def movies in H.264, a fair bit of photoshop use, etc) and heavy multitasking, and I've noticed no difference at all between Vista SP1 and XP (any SP) when it comes to speed/responsiveness.

Herein is the problem. People ARE different. I've already stated *my* opinion on that..Having said that, so are computers - different.
However, if it's true you are running system with 12 harddrives, you are bound to have several impacts on your system simply because of that.
On vista ultimate group policies are updated every bloody 30 seconds, then all drives are read, and sorry to be blunt here, but either your computer is fantastic much better then anyone else's (which it aint, you have 8500gt etc), or you are simply way to tolerant and patient human being that can be quite happy with vista the way it is.

And as you say you do a lot of encoding, which can take much time, im inclined to believe you are the kind of user who can be happy with vista.
I am not thinking of xp 32bit, or doing comparisons to that, i am thinking of xp x64 vs my experiences with vista x64.

All of this tho, i am confident that nuhi will make vlite much more like nlite in the near future, so we can perhaps give it another go.
But if you can't both see and feel that vista is sluggish, then that kind of sensitivity simply does not apply to you.
With over at least 40, probably between 50-60 processes running on a default vista, vs about 20-30 on xp x64, it is mathematically and logically total both within reason and result absolutely without a shadow of a doubt
crystal clear that there is no chance in hell that vista would ever get down to the response time that xp then runs with.

Then the argument come down to how everyone can adjust their vista or xp as they see fit, tweak things, remove things from startup and so on.
I did this, to some great length, proving services and things can be disabled on vista. But i have on the other hand done so for years with various systems.
To me, it is the simple truth that it will as it is today, be impossible to get vista to be as responsive as xp. It's just not possible. I tried literally every tweak known to man and some crazy stuff of my own.
Even with vista running at same amount of services as xp at bare minimum, that is 4 (xp can work without any actually, but it aint recommendable), i just couldnt be satisfied.

But remember, we are all different.

No. Hard drives aren't "read" every 30 seconds, they manage to stay spinned down most of the time actually. I've never seen (or heard of) having multiple hard disk slow down windows (any version) before. Actually, quite the opposite (OS is on 2x Seagate 7200.11 RAID0). Dunno why you bring my vid card into this, but it's actually quite seriously overkill for anything else than gaming. And no, I'm not patient at all when it comes to waiting after slow computers.

As for the x64 versions -- no idea. I don't run XP x64 or Vista x64. I have devices I can't live without that don't have 64 bit drivers, and for which there are no real replacements. Besides, I'm not in a big rush to switch to x64 just yet. Yes, I'd see about 512MB of RAM extra, but then again x64 apps need ~15% more RAM in the first place (due to double sized pointers, double sized structues and such -- even your CPU cache is affected), negating all of your gains unless you have more than 4GB (and what "normal" everyday task, or what kind of desktop usage needs MORE than 4GB right now?) Yes, the extra CPU registers do speed up some things a bit, but then I'd have a performance penalty running pretty much all of my apps under WOW64 (it's known that apps like excel 2007 uses TWICE as much CPU to do the same math under WOW64 -- I'd call that serious overhead, and no, there's no x64 version of even that!), so no real gain there either. So no real significant benefits yet, just the drivers/codecs/security app compatibility issues and such, even though it's slowly getting better. No real advantages yet (on the desktop), no compelling reasons to switch, so I'll wait some more -- Likely until I decide I have a need for 8GB of RAM o a desktop, and have ~250$ to spare for it (not anytime soon).


I don't really think it's that... Besides, I've never seen anyone mention that this box was even remotely slow or anything (actually, if I turn Aero Glass on, it feels FASTER than XP does)


Actually, I have 38 processes running currently, including firefox, indexing, the sidebar, 2 for the intel RAID, the realtek mixer, so 32 if you don't count remove these.
Besides, total number of processes have very little to do with raw system speed. It very much depends what processes they are, and how much resources they each consume. Lots of these processes aren't really doing anything, and they're even paged to disk.

Anyhow. I see no real difference between this box booting Vista or XP, or any of my other boxes running XP. Everything is instantaneous on all of them... Anything faster, and it would happen before I clicked basically. Encoding speeds, file copy speeds and virtually everything else I do, the speeds are basically identical.

Well kind of problem here is i am comparing against x64 versions, while you are defending the x86-32bit point of view on matters which are not equal nor can be because of their nature.
So it's funny =)

Seeing that you have 38 processes on 32bit is way more then i had anticipated for 32bit, all tho u have some apps running. It's a good estimate for x64 still, but then again you wouldnt know seemingly. So this was like
talking to the wall.

FYI vista does read drives every 30 second as i stated there. I dont just say things for fun, i only write what i have seen and experienced. I'm still putting my money on that you're a much more patient and tolerant man not too keen on responses, so vista is what would suit you just fine. This is no offence, but it's a pretty clear line of who can thrive with vista and who can not.



It's like coffee, sugar or milk. Everyone's taste is ultimately different. I would however like to point out that if you indeed do a lot of encoding, you should seriously look into what benefits x64 can give you.
Using huge memory ram disks as temporary storage, for encoding temp space, for vmware test installs, for instant disk load gaming (always first on servers, as long as gfx/cpu can keep up), Huge system cache at your disposal (again taking strain of drives(increasing i/o performance), x64 browsing/security measures in clean x64 enviroments, advanced write features with x64 xp, not to mention all the specs of running with a x64 cpu system.

Care to back up that claim?


Like I said, I have plenty of reasons NOT to... I'm already well aware of those things, but it's not practical/possible to run it on my system for various reasons.

Besides, RAM disks wouldn't help very much for encoding AV, the total disk I/O speed is quite low: under 1MB/sec for xvid (which already flies, about 150fps), and MUCH lower for x264. It's really a CPU bound process -- that's by FAR the biggest bottleneck (both cores pegged at 100%). The one thing that would speed it up a lot, is a faster/quad core processor. vmware's already plenty fast, no worries there. Security stuff... non-issue. It's been years since the last virus or spyware, on any of our boxes.

Lack of 64 bit drivers, lack of crucial apps for that platform (that wouldn't run or run well under WOW64) and such is however a big show stopper.

Just look into group policy editor on vista, it says so there. Im not in vista so cant do a copy & paste.
All i'm saying is that there's no valid reason to not choose x64 over x86 today. If one already has a 32bit os, sure that's fine, but i wouldnt advise anyone to buy a 32bit os for a new computer, given how cheap memory is alone.

IF a program doesnt work under x64, it's most likely because it's outdated or the creators don't care or don't have access to a 64bit os, imho. I'm yet to have a single program that doesnt work under x64 which works under 32bit.

I looked everywhere at least twice, and it doesn't say so anywhere.


And again, I very strongly disagree over that one. There are NO compelling reasons to use x64 on your average desktop right now, much the inverse.

Memory gains on systems with 4GB are pretty much negated by the extra memory usage of processes (due to double sized pointers & such things -- it even makes your cpu cache hold less instructions)
Gains made from the handful of extra CPU registers are pretty much negated when you're pretty much running everything under WOW64 (again, the excel 2007 example, twice the CPU usage under WOW64)

And then, you get all the quirks from not so mature drivers like seen here... Add to that the many devices without any drivers, the lack of crucial codecs for AV playback on x64 (e.g. CoreAVC, Haali splitter, etc) resulting in much higher resource usage or lack of functionality, and the overall lack of x64 apps in the first place (no point running everything under WOW64)...

I can't think of a single reason to move to x64, there's just no advantages yet (any potential advantage is outweighed), unless you have like 8GB of RAM, which is definitely NOT cheap yet (~$250 for quality fast DDR2), and most people wouldn't have a use for that much in desktop in the first place.

Actually, 8GB for 250$ is friggin cheap considering people pay up to 800$ for video cards or worst, people that buy lolExtremeCPU.

The advantage? 100% removal of swap file. It makes the system holy snappy it's mind boggling. I haven't ran into a single problem yet, and I do casual AV encoding, Photoshop, burning and a massive amount of gaming on MMOs, FPSs, etc...

There is virtually NO difference between my Enterprise Vista64 with Classic Theme (all the fluff turned off) & XP64 Classic Theme (again, all the fluff turned off). I don't even get 2 FPS difference in any games, my PCMarks are identical, 3DMarks fluctuate every **** time I run them, on either system, I need to get Vantage, a more up to date product... I too can somehow feel when I'm waiting a few milleseconds more, and I can't tell the difference between the 2.

8GB with no swap is like god mode for x64 Vista or XP... for what I do anyways. Obviously, your mileage will vary.

Everything's cheap if you put it that way. Back in 1995, 8MB of EDO RAM was 800$. Or back in 1980, a 18MB hard drive was 5G's. That still doesn't make it cheap (not everyone has nearly that much $ to spend on RAM nowadays -- at least I don't).


Paging already isn't an issue at 4GB with fairly intensive use. With Vista only stuff that really isn't necessary to keep in RAM gets paged to disk. Actually, it even pre-caches stuff you might need later on in the free memory. It's not like XP, it doesn't just dump it all to the page file to have it all free (i.e. unused). Page file usage, looking at any perf counter is already quite low. There's just not much gain to make from having 8GB there for the vast majority of people.

I can already have dozens of apps open at once (including firefox, photoshop, etc) and not have paging problems, even on a system with only 2GB RAM. And encoding isn't memory intensive at all, it's 100% a CPU-bound process (try encoding high def stuff with x264, you'll see VERY easily... Low mem usage overall, very low disk I/O, but all cores pegged to 100% solid, and it still crawls)

It might be different when it comes to games, no idea there, I don't play any.

Uh... Low page file usage? Answer this.



It uses 1.3GB RAM with nothing but Opera, the task manager and IrfanView (to make the screenshot). And it uses 1.5GB page file!!! That's with the page file "disabled"... System is lightly tweaked, just UAC, Windows Defender, Windows Firewall and Security Center disabled, no AV is running, and any extra processes are from the ATi drivers, nothing more.

On XP i was used to the feeling of "instantaneous computing" even with only 2GB RAM. Now i have 6GB, so WHY THE HECK does Vista have to churn my hard drive like crazy after i close Opera? For the love of God, it only takes about 100MB RAM with 15 tabs open.

It's NOT about the benchmarks. It's NOT about resource demanding games. It's about the system's general "feeling", and its responsiveness in doing everyday tasks. And it's about minor issues that drive people like me crazy.

For example, they screwed up the ADPCM codec so bad that older games that worked in XP will not work in Vista even if i install the codec from XP. Then the Explorer bugs like the "doubling filesize". Then still chewing up a whole CPU core for smooth scrolling (i always keep it off for that reason) and still not supporting the mouse wheel during setup. The new navigation system is confusing, the old one was good enough and there since Win95. The control panel has been scrambled. The display properties applet has been broken into tabbed windows with only one tab, which look like s***. It's all these little things that make people hate Vista. Oh, and i want a XP style start menu, just with that search box added. We're not running 800x600, you know? Also, the sidebar is useless if you don't have your system locale set to English.

My point is that they fixed what wasn't broken and didn't fix what was. And if you turn all the GUI eye candy off, you'll end up with Windows 2000 with DX10 and a whole lotta more bugs.

That's both easy and hard to explain.

Your ram usage is quite high, not sure why (that's the hard part). Hard to say why, without being on the box and looking around.
Page file wise, it's a misunderstanding on your behalf. The windows task manager has long been labeling things in stupid ways, like actual RAM usage of a process on XP isn't the default column, it's actually called "VM Size" (so you can't really blame people for not getting it right). Similarly, "Page File" isn't actually the page file usage at all, but rather the commit size! That's the total amount of memory used, physical and virtual combined. Long story short, you don't have a 1.5GB page file...

Here's a screenshot of a vista box (with only 2GB), done with process explorer (and I think there was a couple extra processes even, like the realtek mixer). Commit charge is only 382MB, 17 of which is used by process explorer, so 365MB used TOTAL. And that's not using vLite or anything. Same tweaks you've done, plus turning off some unnecessary services, nothing special. Don't ask me what the hell your box is doing with that extra 1.2GB of RAM, because I have no idea...



Most people don't quite understand Windows memory management, or are fooled by all the mislabeled stuff, and often make comments based on wrong numbers and such (it's extremely common actually). I recommend a GREAT tool that's part of the Sysinternals Suite: process explorer. All their apps are he very best, and extremely useful actually (process monitor, autoruns, etc). The Sysinternals Video Library (with Mark Russinovich himself) is a must-watch too. They specifically talk about Windows management on one of the DVDs. It's $400 admittedly, but most IT training/courses will run you a lot more than that, even for simple things.

Dunno about the ADPCM and old games, as I don't play old games. Yes, the status bar file size bug is known, that's certainly an issue. I don't have issues with it "chewing a core" though, navigation works great once you get used to it (much stuff is going this way regardless, and eventually you have to change some things -- not all change is bad). Control panel being shuffled around? They basically did that with every version or just about. As for display properties, they opted for different icons for different tasks, instead of cramming it all in one screen. It's not that hard to find stuff actually. Just why should themes be in the same screen as resolution and all that anyways? Just because it used to be? And the sidebar works just fine in the other language I've tried/used (i.e. french). Some things change with every version, and some people resist to change more than others...


That's so far from the truth that I wouldn't know where to start...

I know Process Explorer, i used it all the time in XP. I forgot it works on Vista too, getting it now. Thanks for the tip on memory management, i knew those numbers couldn't be true. I was at 1.3GB because i had quite a lot of stuff running that i closed afterwards, it's probably Superfetch keeping some things in memory. With some additional service tweaking (still left Superfetch on though, just to see if it really makes a difference over time), i'm at this now:



But honestly, do you think i care about that since i have 6GB RAM? The extra usage may be because it's 64-bit. And oh, i got it. On XP it would say Commit Charge. I remember that... So that there means Windows really doesn't use the page file and has everything in RAM. That makes sense now.

As about the sidebar, it does work, but in their infinite stupidity (quoted from Volatus) M$ made the gadgets language dependent, so you'll have to do some lengthy and dirty renaming of the files to get English gadgets on a Romanian system locale, coz M$ only provides two gadgets for Romanian locale, and they have something to do with Office, therefore useless as i don't use Office.

Crahak, your presence lately on msfn has been great
You are obviously a really knowlegable person and just reading through this thread has been an insight into that knowlege.
As for the people who "Bash Vista".....shame on you, pickup the Windows Vista Resource Kit book and read it cover to cover, it will COMPLETELY change the way you think about vista


Cheers

Thanks

That's actually a great book you're recommending (I started reading it a couple months ago), but reading it cover to cover might be a bit much as it's 1568 pages long I might be done reading it by the time windows 7 is out...

yeah its huge and i havent read the lot either .....BUT you see my point, i was dubious at first especially since the first couple of Beta releases were nothing but a pain in the arse! However after the RTM and reading a lot of that book my view has changed entirely and i can see that everything was done with a **** good reason.

It's not fair to say this. Of course 64-bit code is going to take more RAM. The amount of extra RAM it takes is not twice as much or anywhere near it.


I haven't experienced this personally. Excel's resource usage on my Vista x64 work PC has never been strikingly high.

Again, unfair. You make it sound like 64-bit drivers have a monopoly on bugs. Oh believe me they don't. It doesn't take more than a casual glance at the "fixes" part of any nVidia 32-bit driver documentation to see that. Given the vast numbers of people out there now running 64-bit Vista, it can be safely deduced that 64-bit drivers have reached a satisfactory maturity level. I use Vista x64 at work in a production environment with a variety of hardware and peripherals and everything works and works well. I never complain.

As for codecs, I typically use Windows Media Player 11 32-bit (since it is the default player in Vista x64, and XP64 does not have 64-bit WMP) and for the most part it works. 64-bit codecs are getting better all the time, but for the most part a 64-bit media player won't provide much benefit over a 32-bit one. Videos just aren't math-intensive enough. Codec writers aren't exactly bending over backwards to get their stuff up-ported, and I don't blame them.


I'm not someone to do frequent reinstalls anyway, but with Windows requiring activation on every install it makes sense for me to install my OS as little as possible. The Vista Business x64 I installed two weeks ago on my new rig is the OS I intend to still be using a year or two or three from now. As such, I do not want to be forced to reinstall simply to run an app that is 64-bit only. I'm no future teller, but given how practically every mainstream processor sold today not only has x64 instructions but has multiple cores, the idea of a "64-bit only, multi-core only" killer app sometime in the next couple of years isn't too far-fetched. Microsoft *did* toy with the idea of a 64-bit Office during the Office 2007 development process.

Vista x64 isn't some hobby development thing. It's mature, stable, and runs very well. It works as a gaming OS, it works as a production OS.

oh, and..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820146731
Mushkin 4GB for $90 but with a rebate, $65. 8GB would be $130. I ended up getting this myself.

I moved to (XP)x64 for a few reasons.

• 8GB+ of RAM
• The removal of the 16bit subsystem
• The support that it will get far and beyond that of the general consumer version of XP
• Software developement
• Photography (64bit version of PS is in the works)

Luckilly, every piece of H/W that I have has 64bit drivers. I do think that MSFT should abandon 32bit at some point and focus solely on 64bit developement. H/W is advancing rapidly and yet the software (thanks to 20 year old compatability layers and lazy developers) continues to hold it back.

Nice posts you've made, btw. Also, thanks for the Screensaver Powertoy. Works fine in XP.

I didn't say its use doubled, I said 15% overall. So if you have 4GB and only see 3.5 of it, and install x64 to see the last 512MB, then you don't actually gain anything! (3.5GB + 15% = 4.025GB so in theory you might be losing a tiny bit)


It's not the idle resource usage that's high. It's the actual CPU cycles used to do the calculations, like someone else said "it marshals memory access back and forth to adjust pointer sizes", and that makes the CPU usage considerably higher (several other office tasks have the problem, like animations in powerpoint). And nevermind a 64 bit copy of Office will likely never have VBA (like Office 2008 for the Mac), likely won't work with old 32 bit ActiveX controls, etc. And again, it's just one example. *All* apps have extra overhead running under WOW64. Your apps don't get any performance advantages until they are native x64 versions.


Then trying playing H.264 in a mkv container for example. Right, no CoreAVC, no Haali splitter. It's very problematic IMO. And videos ARE very math intensive -- perhaps the most math-intensive most people do on their PCs actually (besides games). Codecs are just that -- a LOT of complicated math, and it's VERY demanding on the CPU (just try encoding HD videos with x264). Running codecs and media players (for HD videos at least) under WOW64 sounds like a nightmare.

That's more of a side effect than anything. And it's not like the presence of NTVDM on your box lowered performance or anything.


It doesn't really work any better than the x86 version for that (unless you wanna try running x64 compiles). I'm perfectly happy with Vista x86 for that (and VS2008 is perhaps the app I spend the most time in)


That's a reason in itself to have waited some more. There isn't a x64 version yet (it's due for next year), and meanwhile running PS under WOW64, adding extra overhead, doesn't make much sense either. And once it's out, it just might need new x64 versions of your plugins and such too. Adobe themselves last time said there was no point going with a x64 version, because it wouldn't have helped at all (it's memory bound, and x64 doesn't make memory access any faster). You're only going to get some benefits, when you work on a few GB worth of images at once (100+ megapixel HDR pano shots? ) And again, most people will need to buy more RAM for it to make use of it in the first place.


Yes, I totally agree there. They seriously have to. Windows 7 shouldn't even come in a x86 version. It's not like anyone's going to run it on an old P4 or an Athlon XP, and by then 8GB of RAM will be quite cheap and getting close to mainstream.

I have been scouring Google and have not seen one single reference to Excel taking more CPU cycles to do calculations under a 64-bit OS. Can you provide me with some links?


You want an H.264 video in an MKV container? You got it. Screenshot attached. Vista x64, WMP11 64-bit.
"[Minori-Osu!] Zero no Tsukaima - Princess no Rondo - 01 (h264 848x480) [9EA0CE55].mkv"

I have also been scouring Google for any references to unsatisfactory playback of HD content in Vista x64, but have been unable to find anything.

Quickest ref to find, by Stéphane Rodriguez, is on the "OOXML is defective by design" blog here. He's a specialist in the subject matter, and he's documented the excel 2007 format extensively as you can see here. Again, it's just one example, to show WOW64 does add extra overhead.


Well, perhaps you're using different codecs instead of CoreAVC and the Haali splitter (or running those under WOW64) but again that's not exactly optimal (higher resource usage for sure).

It may be a side effect of the 64bit architecture, but the removal of the 16bit subsystem is a good thing. It's that much less legacy code that needs to be supported and less code problems to deal with on MSFTs part. The more legacy code that is removed from Windows the better. Instead of maintaining legacy code for old apps, they [MSFT] can put more effort into other aspects of Windows.


It does when you need to build 64bit binaries and need access to larger sets of RAM.


I didn't need to wait longer. I needed/wanted 64bit now, not later. When 64bit versions of my favorite programs comes along, I will already have the capability to take advantage of them. I like to future proof my PC parts purchases for at least a little while.


By that time (hopefully), with Nehalem, memory configurations of at least 12GB will be (somewhat) common. I have 8GB in my box now and sometimes it does get constrained a bit. DDR3 prices will be dropping sometime mid next year.


I use CorAVC and Haali, Xvid, QT and others almost on a daily basis under 64bit XP. Absolutely no problems whatsoever. Video playback in XP64 is a lot smoother than in 32bit XP.

In the link you provide, there is neither any reference to 64-bit nor "defective" as a word, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at. It's a lot of code from an 18 month old article.


The player, when running that video, uses about 46MB of RAM. It uses 64-bit codecs provided from the x64 components pack, a codec pack that's been posted on these very forums since it's creation. WMP11 64-bit can't use 32-bit codecs, WOW64 or otherwise.

Crahak : 8gb ddr2 IS mainstream, maybe not in your country but everyone i know, has at least 4gb, and generally around 8gb is the norm.
I'm upgrading to 16GB once i can get hold of a decent 4x4gb set, should be out some next month hopefully.

8GB ddr3 however, wont be mainstream before early next year most likely.

Canada. And ~95% of new PCs sold nowadays only come with 2GB, for most of North America, and likely a lot of European countries too. 4GB is just barely starting to be what I'd call "mainstream" (there still isn't much "normal" people with that much RAM in their PCs)

The number of desktops I've seen so far with 8GB? Zero (and I see LOTS of PCs...) It's not anywhere near "the norm".

8GB might be mainstream among PC gamers, but that's a tiny minority of "enthusiasts".

hmm... i just downgraded from Vista x64 to XP x86 SP3. what i got was MUCH FASTER SPEEDS but abt 1 day into using it, i got a common problem i seem to always have sooner or later, when i start XP, sometimes it lags (maybe cos i clicked something too fast or what). when i go to task manager, i see that under the Username column, its blank! so it seems like explorer got corrupt or something... looks like its true that XP is faster but less stable. i always liked XP for its speed and Vista for its looks. but i nv thought Vista was actually more stable...

thinking of getting a Mac, but i just saw Apple's site and it seems "Snow Leopard" will be out soon? so i think i will go back to Vista for now?

http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/

xp.sp2 doesn't have these problems

i think there is... i searched around google i think last time, and learnt that its due to explorer.exe being corrupt i think